In this twilight, how dare you speak of grace
by felinedetached
Summary: She looks at Nagato, looks at the little blonde boy who convinced him to give up so much, and she hates. It burns in her gut, a bright flame that should catch everything about her on fire—she's flammable, made of hair and paper and skin, and she burns just as well as a forest in midsummer.


Konan's not sure how it came to this. She's not sure how it came to be her against the world; isn't sure when Nagato became someone _against_ her instead of _with_ her, but now she stands here, the last one who still believes in a world of peace. It was the boy, she thinks, the Kyuubi jinchuriki and his overwhelming charisma; his overwhelming, unwavering belief that, despite everything, everyone has some of _his_ version of good in them.

She looks at Nagato, looks at the little blonde boy who convinced him to give up _so much_ , and she hates. It burns in her gut, a bright flame that should catch everything about her on fire—she's flammable, made of hair and paper and skin, and she burns just as well as a forest in midsummer, sparked by a cigarette's not-yet-dead ashes, an unwatched campfire, the deliberate drop of a lighter into dry leaf-mush. Konan is nothing like Ame, with its cool, biting rain, leaving nothing but ice and cold and damp behind.

Konan has never burnt cold.

Instead, she _rages_ , destroys things, lets herself be impractical for once. Emotions _are_ impractical, after all, just irrational bursts of idiocy. Normally, she would take those bursts and lock them up, take the impracticality and make it a weapon for use only against herself.

(She doesn't like emotions. They make her dangerous, make her someone who could be turned against her goal. _Their_ goal. But, in the end, it wasn't herself she had to worry about, and that, somehow, makes her think that she might not mind hate.)

* * *

Her 'teammates'—if they can even be called that—shy away from her, recognising her rage for what it is. Something destructive, dangerous, deadly. Something to be _feared_. There's something that curls in her gut, at that, something suspiciously close to satisfaction.

"We," she says, standing where Nagato had, once, "will fulfil our goal." Her grin, when it comes to her face, shows more teeth than it should. Itachi—Uchiha Itachi, the man who murdered his clan in cold blood and tortured his brother just for good measure, and how she hates him for that—flinches at her expression. The satisfaction boiling her blood _roars_ , leaps up to settle next to hate in the list of emotions she might not quite hate, anymore.

Hidan, though—Hidan grins, his smile almost as bloodthirsty as her own, although not as full of hate. He follows Jashin, and Jashin is a god of slaughter and pain, but she doesn't think he deals with hate.

That's okay. She can be an angel of hate herself. Hate and bitter satisfaction and rage, all those ugly emotions that taste like ash and tannin on her tongue. She'll teach them hate and rage and the bitter, mean satisfaction that runs through her blood like a particularly vicious poison. Show them the ugly thrill that runs through her knowing that the man who betrayed her likely died in pain; died with his lungs full of liquid and his body slowly, slowly failing him.

"We will create peace," she says, and as she speaks she tastes blood on her tongue. "Through domination."

* * *

She takes Konoha first. Of course she does—for what they have done, for what they _took_ , she is making them pay. Making them an example, a _warning_.

 _This is what is coming for you. Prepare. You will fall regardless._

Konan holds Senju Tsunade up by her hair, stands in front of her people, and slits her throat.

It's an example. A warning.

 _Not even your strongest can stand against me._

She has blood on her hands and in her hair and on her teeth, and when she smiles, it's with lips painted the same shade.

"You are the first gift," she says, "Rejoice."

She steps back, lets Itachi and Deidara and Hidan do what they do best. A queen and her attack dogs. It's an amusing thought.

* * *

They take Suna, next. Slit Sabaku no Gaara's throat, then those of his puppeteer brother and markedly more dangerous sister. The Village Hidden in the Sand falls quickly, after that. Third is Kumo, with their two jinchuriki, but Konan faced down the Kyuubi no Jinchuriki and she _won_ , and the Hachibi may have more control but it doesn't have the sheer power. It's systematic: take down the strongest, take out the jinchuriki, make the Kage an example.

No one fights back when they know their Kage is dead. When they know the other villages are falling, one by one, and there's no one left to fight with them.

Konan saves Oto for last.

There is a special place in her heart for traitors, and maybe she wasn't bothered by Orochimaru's defection before. Maybe she didn't really care that he only joined them for Itachi's eyes; didn't really care that he never intended to stay. He saw them as a means to an end. Konan could understand that.

Now, though, now hatred and rage and sick satisfied joy burns in her bloodstream, and she thinks of Orochimaru's defection and her whole body sings for his death. Sings for his life in her hands, his bones breaking under her paper, his blood on her tongue.

When she marches into Oto, they stand against her, the last shinobi village.

She tears through their ranks alone, fights and fights and fights until she encounters a boy with black hair and spinning mangekyou eyes. She leaves him for Itachi.

Orochimaru's last line of defence is a white-haired medic whose eyes are hidden by his glasses as he turns, light reflecting off their glass lenses.

"Konan," he says, and she abruptly recognises him as Sasori's spy. He doesn't seem inclined to move, though.

"Step aside," she says, cool, because Sasori likely wouldn't mind it if she killed his spy, but she doesn't want to have to fight him if he does.

"No," Kabuto responds, voice even and his hands lighting up green. It's an even temperament, an odd loyalty, medical chakra twisted to hurt instead of heal.

He is not loyal to Sasori.

Perhaps Konan should teach him about picking better spies. No matter, though—what's one more death after the hundreds of thousands she's left behind her?

Kabuto's death is anticlimactic. Konan's blood burns for a harder fight.

Orochimaru gives her one.

* * *

She returns to Ame, afterwards; returns to where it all started. Returns to the true last shinobi village—the last _anything_ village, really.

Her rage still simmers, hatred's ash-and-tannin taste tingling on her tongue.

When she kills Ame, she kills them quietly.

(Of everyone, they deserve the swift, painless deaths.)

* * *

"Domination," Konan says, watches the sun rise over a dead country, with only criminals and the undead as her company. It tastes like victory.


End file.
